Channel Profile: ABC Family

PREMIUM: The ABC Family network is doing nine original movies this year, says Tom Zappala, the executive VP of program acquisitions and scheduling for ABC Cable Networks Group.

“Movies are still a big part of what we do,” he says. “We’ve stayed pretty consistent in recent years in terms of the number of original movies we offer annually, generally 8 to 12.”

At markets and festivals, Zappala says, he occasionally finds a finished movie, but just as often the takeaways are conversations with producers about movies they are developing or would like to do. “We’re hitting people at different points in the development process,” he says. “We’ve worked with everybody from small independent producers to the major studios like Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney. It’s an open-door policy.”

He doesn’t consider a movie to be a pilot for a series, but he does say they work together. “We have Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence who are in a very successful movie for us, My Fake Fiancé, and before that we had Melissa in Holiday in Handcuffs, so she’s done two of our highest-rated original movies and now she’s doing a series for us. [Melissa & Joey, also with Lawrence, from Walt Disney Television]. There are definitely tonal similarities between the movies and the series. We feel it’s an opportunity to open up a new audience, where we might have people who watch the series and who may try the original movie, and then we have people watching the movie who might get turned on to a series by the talent that’s in the movie. They do work together.”

Further, Zappala says the ad-sales group puts a high priority on movies, which they are able to sell at a premium. Much depends on scheduling and promotion of theme blocks around holidays and seasonal events.

For its “25 Days of Christmas” strand in December and “Campus Crush” in August, ABC Family commissions one or more new original TV movies and uses them to anchor the event.

“For the upcoming ‘25 Days of Christmas’, we have a movie called Ex-Mas Carol that stars Christina Milian and Chad Michael Murray,” Zappala says. “It’s the cornerstone of our original-event strategy. It’s the focal point of the event. We have movies that we initiate every year. Because we’ve been doing the event over ten years now, we’ve been able to build up a nice arsenal of original movies that get repeated every year. Every year we do at least one original movie, sometimes two or three. The cumulative effect of commissioning these movies is reflected in our schedule. You’ll see movies from years past, like Santa Baby and Holiday in Handcuffs, appear alongside the new movies.”

Zappala says that there is no single formula for developing a TV movie. “Sometimes we have material brought to us. Other times we have a group here that develops internally. We may take a script and produce it ourselves or we may take it to someone else to produce it for us. Or somebody will bring us a script that we like that they intend to produce, and we’ll get involved early in the process. Other times we are brought completed movies that we brand as originals. We’re pretty open in the ways we look at movies.”

Budgets vary widely, Zappala says. “On the lower end we’re in the hundred thousands and in the high end the millions. It goes back to the production model; it can be a finished movie or a co-production. And then there is the odd movie that was intended to go theatrical.”
The number of plays a movie receives depends on audience reaction. “For Holiday in Handcuffs, we can’t get enough plays in,” Zappala says. “It’s been a tremendous success. Other movies get from four to 15 plays. Generally they’re multi-year agreements.”